Beatrice Sparks "Go Ask Alice" & "Jay's Journal" (Creepy "NON" Fiction Writer)
What a Creep
Sonia Mansfield
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2023
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Season 21, Episode 3
Beatrice Sparks (Go Ask Alice & Jay’s Journal)
In the 1970s & 1980s--entertainment designed to reach teenagers (and cure them of society’s ills) fell to YA writers, TV Movies, and “After School Specials.” One of the most compelling stories was the subject of 1971’s Go Ask Alice.
Based supposedly on the true story of a teen girl who delved into drugs and ultimately lost her life, it was designed to scare the audience, and the 1973 film cemented its importance as a tool for communicating between generations.
Beatrice Sparks billed herself as an adolescent psychology expert with an uncanny ability to write stories based on true-life journals and in-person interview sessions (thousands, she claimed.) But how true were her supposed nonfiction works?
Trigger warnings: Addiction and discussion of suicide
Sources for this episode:
Quillette:
Beatrice Sparks Wikipedia
Esquire magazine
Jezebel
Rolling Stone
New York Times
Salt Lake City Weekly (1998)
Houston Public Media
Salt Lake City Tribune
Sydney Morning Herald
Rick Emerson: Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries”
The New Yorker
Slate
Vanity Fair
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to What A Creep, the show with Margot Donnie and Sonia Mansfield talking about |
| 0:06.2 | creeps from the past to the present. |
| 0:08.9 | This is your quick guide to the biggest creeps, jerks, assholes and losers, the best of the |
| 0:13.6 | worst. |
| 0:14.6 | From two nice ladies who want the world to be a little less creepy. |
| 0:26.9 | Welcome back to What A Creep, this is Margot Donnie, you and my cohort in creepitude |
| 0:30.5 | as always is the amazing Sonia Mansfield. |
| 0:33.0 | Hey Sonia, hello my friend, hello my friend, we are recording this time. |
| 0:41.2 | We are the podcast that talks about creeps from the past to the present. |
| 0:44.4 | We have kind of a literary creep to talk about today, but it's also got a little bit of |
| 0:48.9 | pop culture in there. |
| 0:50.8 | I'm excited to talk to y'all and get into this story. |
| 0:53.7 | There's a lot going on here. |
| 0:55.6 | Just wanted to let you know that if you want to give us ideas for creeps and for non creeps |
| 0:59.4 | just so you know we always end the show with someone who's a non creep so you don't leave |
| 1:03.6 | feeling like the world is a total waste of time. |
| 1:06.9 | That's how we want you to feel a little bit better about the world than when you entered |
| 1:10.7 | in this podcast. |
| 1:11.7 | Okay. |
| 1:12.7 | Even when we're talking about creeps. |
| 1:15.1 | If you want to reach out to us, we do have a basic Facebook page where that's where people |
| 1:18.3 | usually go to complain about our language. |
... |
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